Given how vast Stephen King's bibliography is, you could conceivably have a film a year from his work until the heat death of the universe some 10^{10^{10^{56}}} years from now - or maybe not.
The recent surge in King adaptations is down to the fact that It did gangbusters at the box office, so just about anything studios can get their hands on is being adapted. Hell, even The Tommyknockers - which King himself hates and is a pretty terrible book, too - is being adapted for the screen.
Deep fans of King will know that he's had a couple of Richard Bachman books made for film - particularly The Running Man, which was really a loose adaptation, and Thinner, which was meant to star John Candy before his passing. The others haven't been adapted, presumably because King's just fired out so much work since than it's taken up the interest.
However, THR is now reporting that 1979's The Long Walk is being adapted for the screen by James Vanderbilt, who wrote Zodiac and potential Oscar favourite The Meg. It's kind of odd that The Long Walk hasn't been adapted sooner, as it's basically a YA novel before it was a thing.
Set in an alternate future where the US is governed by a fascist regime, young boys take part in a devastating competition that literally sees them walk until they drop dead - or go off the road and get shot by the military guarding the whole thing. It's going to be a tricky thing to try and adapt, as the novel is literally just them walking and nothing else - but then again, people said Gerald's Game was incapable of being adapted and it made for a slick psychological thriller with a great central performance from Carla Gugino.
What'll tell a lot about how this works is which director tackles it. Could it perhaps be time for Rob Reiner to make a comeback?
No release date has been set as of yet.
Via THR
